Movie The Society of Dead Poets: Summary, Analysis and Meaning
The death poet Society, also called Dead poets society (Dead Poets Society), is a 1989 film directed by Peter Weir that has become a cult film.
The script is inspired by a literature professor named Samuel Pickering, who taught screenwriter Tom Schulman when he was studying at Montgomery Bell Academy in Tennessee. It was from him that Schulman conceived the character of Professor Keating, played by Robin Williams.
Resume
The story begins in 1959 with the welcoming ceremony of the new school year at Welton Academy, at which point the literature teacher John Keating, a former student of the school, is introduced. The motto of the private school, declared on the spot, is: "tradition, honor, discipline and excellence."
Breaking with tradition, in his first class, Professor Keating takes the young people into the room that houses the memories of school history. As they gaze at the photographs of his predecessors, Keating whispers, "Carpe Diem," which means "Seize the day." Thus, he begins an educational path that aims to inspire children.
Keating will replace the theoretical approach to poetry with a method based on poetic reading and freedom of thought. For this, he will use some symbols: he will force the young people to destroy the introductory study of the book of the chair; he will make them call him "Oh, captain, my captain!" instead of professor, referring to a poem by Walt Withman; he will have them climb on the desk to see from a different angle; he will make them relate sports to poetry and will make them write his own poetry.
The founding of the club
Some young people discover that Keating had formed a club called "The Society of Dead Poets" when he was a student. Restless at the idea of living intensely, they resume society.
These young people have in common the fact that their families have planned their future for them and seek to take over their life again. Each one also carries their personal crosses.
Neil perry suffers the coercion of an authoritarian and controlling parent; Todd Anderson manifests an almost pathological introversion; Charles dalton he is an irreverent young man trapped by the prestige of his millionaire family; Richard Cameron it is disciplined and boring; Knox overstreet has discovered love but does not know how to conquer it, while the curious and diligent Gerard pitts Y Steven Meeks they build a radio so they can listen to music.
The climax
As young people dare to think for themselves, they discover their talents and interests. This is how Neil finds his vocation for acting and joins the theater group without the consent of his father, who, upon discovering it, severely forbids him.
Knox will find the courage to go after the girl he likes. Young Todd will manage to open up for the first time in the classroom, although he will remain shy. Finally, Charly will find in the club a space to be himself, adopting the name of the rebel “Nuwanda”.
In order to be expelled, “Nuwanda” publishes in the school bulletin a request to accept women in Welton on behalf of the club, but none of its members were aware of the matter.
Director Nolan punishes Charles in the "traditional" way (with candlesticks) to force him to confess the names of the group members, but he takes full responsibility. Still, the damage is done: Nolan has perceived the club as a threat and will go after whoever inspired him. Upon learning what happened, Keating makes "Nuwanda" see that he has misrepresented the meaning of his teaching.
Outcome
Keating advises Neil to come to terms with his father before the play. Frightened, the young man decides to sneak into the show and makes everyone believe that Mr. Perry has changed his mind. Upon discovering him, Mr. Perry decides to transfer him to military school, where he would remain for ten years. Believing himself without escape, the young man commits suicide.
Neil's death has a great emotional impact on Todd, his roommate. He also unleashes a "witch hunt" on Welton to avoid the academy's discredit. The scapegoat will be Professor Keating, who was already in Nolan's sights because of his methods. The young men are forced to testify against Keating, under penalty of expulsion. Everyone will sign except Charles, the only one expelled.
Before leaving school, Keating will look for some books in the classroom, now in charge of Nolan. Todd stands up to everyone to explain that he was forced to sign and, in an act of unexpected courage, stands on his desk and says goodbye to Keating saying, "Oh, captain, my captain!" Inspired by the courage that shy Todd has conquered, his classmates join in the recognition.
Analysis
The Society of Poets Dead was a highly acclaimed film at the time. However, the positions before her are really controversial. While some make this a cult film, for some critics it is nothing more than a well-directed melodrama and very well represented by its actors.
The topic
The conflict revolves around the social expectation, motor and justification of traditional educational models and family authoritarianism. In this social expectation the implicit ideas of success and failure play a determining weight, deeply rooted in the mentality of a mass, capitalist and thriving society, like that of the 50s in the United States United. Still at that time, success, although economic, was related to the knowledge acquired.
To visually communicate these ideas, director Peter Weir uses frames and camera angles that express the hierarchical system. In the classes of traditional teachers, they star in the picture. When students are included, it is done from the teacher's perspective and sharp or contrapicked angles are accentuated with this always in the upper vertex. A different thing will happen in the scenes with Keating, in which he and his students participate in the same visual hierarchy. He will be the one who turns young people into the protagonists of the scenes.
Professor Keating and literature
In an academic environment dominated by tradition and discipline, it will not be difficult for the teacher Keating igniting passion in the hearts of young people living at the mercy of plans paternal.
The argument is built around the Horacian maxim "Carpe Diem", Which means" Seize the day. " He will also go to the American Walt Whitman, turning his poem to Lincoln "Oh, captain, my captain!" in a way of signaling himself as the leader of those souls.
Keating's program is clearly a program Romantic. The beautiful letters are represented as a liberating instrument of the conscience and, in a certain way, the character vindicates his subversive, uncomfortable, domesticated character through criticism academic.
The introductory study of the book that Keating has destroyed is nothing more than the symbol of analytical rationalism that minimizes the purpose for which the poems were conceived: to move.
Professor Keating does not represent only the courage to express one's own judgment. He really represents the recovery of the pleasure of living through aesthetic experience and knowledge. For this reason, literature is at the center of passion. In reality, these young people have been deprived of the pleasure of living and, why not, of studying, knowing and learning.
For sure we cannot say that Keating questions parental authority or the value of education. Rather, Keating seems to want to encourage young people to understand that work is only part of the job. life and that, through poetry and the arts, they can recover the beauty of living, which is what they he works. He also seems to want to convey to them the affection for knowledge as an experience and not as a mere tool.
Keating is concerned that young people do not understand what literature has to do with them, he is concerned about technical pragmatism, he is concerned about beauty subtraction. Actually, it seems that Keating speaks more to the generation of the late eighties and early nineties, a A time when the humanities began to be seen as a useless adjunct to education, an ode to the utilitarian.
Carpe Diem and the trivialization of meaning
When "Nuwanda" challenges the academy with his "mischief", fraught with consequences unimaginable for everyone, Keating reprimands him. This episode is very important to understand that the writer and director are not trying to celebrate stupidity.
Living fully is not for the character Keating anything like meaningless pleasure, or irresponsible fun. On the contrary, it is somehow implicit that the experience of living intensely also means taking charge of one's own responsibility. It is, therefore, about valuing the little things, recognizing beauty in them, and not forgetting that this is the purpose of life: appreciating, valuing, making the most of the day, Carpe Diem.
Who is guilty?
Realizing that Keating is, at heart, moderate in his criticism but avant-garde in his methods, the outcome of Neil Perry's story seems very extreme. It also seems extreme in light of the pretensions of characters like Mr. Perry, a man of middle class whose purpose is to give their son an advantage in the distribution of social power and economic.
Some critics have pointed out in this one of the film's weak points, although the symbolic act of Neil's suicide is what generates the film's emotional force. After all, isn't the loss of freedom a symbolic death?
However, and that is the point, Neil's decision is not a proclamation of freedom. On the contrary, Neil surrenders himself to the jaws of the system, abdicates his right to rebel, ignores the strength of what he has learned, and victimizes himself as a captive condemned to the gallows.
Finding Your Inner Voice: Todd Anderson
The true lynchpin of the story will be the shy and silent Todd Anderson. It is in him where the creative and creative processes that the teacher and literature have inspired are really fulfilled. This will be the true character that is transformed.
The figurative tours around his character are of great significance. In addition, from the discursive point of view in him who justifies and saves the character of Keating.
Todd is an archetypal obedient and disciplined teenager, seemingly unflappable. Before young people like that, the daily judges would hand down sentences as ridiculous as "he is an old soul in the body of a young man." It is not true: he is just a young captive of fear, but this way of being young is not normally referred to when people talk about adolescence.
If he is the opposite of a rebellious and troubled teenager, it is because he lives in a state of panic. The excessive control and the lack of love to which he has been subjected makes him believe that everything that inhabits him is unworthy of being shown, ashamed or lacking in interest. Todd has been repressed and turned off by passive-aggressive forms of violence, which we see clearly symbolized in the gift he receives on his birthday for the second time.
Fear of him is so intense that Todd is unable to yell when Teacher Keating asks him to do so in the classroom. But after all the process that he manages to undergo at Welton, it will be Niel's death that releases the cry of pain that lies in his heart. Losing both Niel, his best friend, and Keating, the only teacher willing to work on him, meant a point of no return for Todd.
Inspired by Keating and moved by Neil, Todd takes responsibility for his own person and becomes an example and "teacher" for his fellow impersonators. In this way, he gains his own authority and freedom of thought, just as his teacher taught him.
If the other characters found in Professor Keating's speech an excuse to remain as they were or To make sense of that identity, what Todd does is an inner journey in which he will find himself finally leave of himself. On this journey, he will find the poetic and creative voice, he will discover the beauty that inhabits him, the pleasure of knowing himself and showing himself to others and the voice to proclaim the truth with courage.
Get out of yourself... Isn't that, perhaps, the role of art and literature in our life? Wasn't the word the true unspoken character that drove all the changes in the film? Isn't the word a humanizing and liberating "relationship"?
Poems cited in The death poet Society
Carpe Diem
Do not inquire, Leucónoe (it is not lawful to know),
what end do the gods reserve for your life and mine,
or combine the magic numbers. You better resign yourself
to the decrees of fate, may Jupiter grant you to live many years,
may this be the last you see the waves breaking
Tirreno against the pitfalls opposite to his fury.
Be wise, drink good wine and reduce long hopes
to the brief space of existence. While we talk,
the envied hour flees. Seize the dayDon't trust tomorrowHoracio (Venosa, 65 a. C. - Rome, 8 a. C.)
See also Meaning of the phrase Carpe Diem by Horacio.
Oh, captain, my captain!
Oh captain! My captain! Our dreadful journey is over
The ship has cleared all obstacles, we have won the coveted prize
Nearby is the port, I can already hear the bells and the whole town that cheers you,
Following with their gazes the mighty ship, the audacious and superb ship;
More alas! Oh heart! my heart! my heart!
Do not you see the red drops that fall slowly,
There on the bridge where my captain
He lies spread out, frozen and dead.
Oh captain! My captain! Get up to hear the bells.
Get up. It is for you that they raise the flags. It is because of you that the bugles sound.
These vases are for you, and those adonard crowns.
It is because of you that crowds swarm on the beaches,
It is to you that their cries are raised, that their souls and their fiery faces turn.
Come captain! Dear father!
Let my arm go under your head!
It must surely be a dream that you lie on the bridge.
Spread out, frozen and dead.
My captain does not answer, his lips are still pale and immobile,
My father does not feel the warmth of my arm, he has no pulse or will,
The ship, safe and sound, has dropped anchor, its journey is over.
The victorious ship enters the harbor, back from her gruesome voyage!
Oh beaches, rejoice! Ring, bells!
While I with painful steps
I walk the bridge where my captain
He lies spread out, frozen and dead.Walt Whitman, (USA) 1819-1892)
I went deep into the woods
I went into the woods because I wanted to live intensely;
I wanted to get the juice out of life.
Banish everything that was not life, in order to do so,
not to discover at the moment of my death that I had not lived.Henry David Thoreau (USA, 1817-1862)
To the virgins, so that they take advantage of the time
Take the roses while you can;
time flies fast.
The same flower that you admire today,
tomorrow she will be dead.The glorious celestial lamp, the sun,
the higher you ascend
the sooner it will come your way
and the closer it will be to sunset.The first years are the best,
when youth and blood are warmer;
but consumed, the worst, and worst times
they always succeed the previous ones.So don't be shy, take advantage of the time
and while you can, get married:
Well, once you have passed the prime of life
you may wait forever.Robert Herrick (England, 1591-1674)
Don't let the day go by
Don't let the day end without having grown a little,
without having been happy, without having increased your dreams.
Do not be overcome by discouragement.Do not allow anyone to take away your right to express yourself,
which is almost a must.
Do not give up the urge to do
something extraordinary about your life.Don't stop believing that words and poetry
they can change the world.
No matter what our essence is intact.
We are beings full of passion.Life is desert and oasis.
It knocks us down, it hurts us,
teaches us,
makes us protagonists
of our own history.Although the wind blows against,
the powerful work continues:
You can contribute with one stanza.
Never stop dreaming,
because in dreams man is free.Do not fall into the worst of mistakes:
the silence.
The majority lives in a scary silence.
Do not resign yourself.
Flees.«I emit my screams from the roofs of this world»,
says the poet.
Appreciates the beauty of simple things.You can make beautiful poetry about little things,
but we cannot row against ourselves.
That transforms life into hell.Enjoy the panic it causes you
have life ahead of you.
Live it intensely,
without mediocrity.Think that in you is the future
and face the task with pride and without fear.
Learn from those who can teach you.The experiences of those who preceded us
of our "dead poets",
they help you walk through life.Today's society is us:
The "living poets."
Don't let life pass you by without you living it.Apocryphal
About Peter Weir
Peter Weir is a film director and screenwriter born in 1944 in Australia. He studied Art and Law at the University of Sydney. From the year 1967 he decided to enter the world of television. From this episode, he began to gain experience as a film director. Some of the best known films of him are: Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975); Witness (1985); The Truman Show (1998), The Society of Poets dead (1989) and The Way Back (2010).
Data sheet
- Original name: Dead Poets Society.
- Director: Peter Weir.
- Screenplay: Tom Schulman.
- Music: Maurice Jarre.
- Photography: John Seale.
- Release year: 1989.
- Cast: Robin Williams, Robert Sean Leonard, Ethan Hawke, Josh Charles, Dylan Kussman, Gale Hansen, James Waterston, Allelon Ruggiero, Norman Lloyd, Kurtwood Smith, Melora Walters, Welker White, John Cunningham, Debra Mooney, Lara Flynn Boyle.
Awards
- 1990: César: Best Foreign Film
- 1989: Oscar: Original Screenplay.
- 1989: BAFTA: Movie, Soundtrack.
- 1989: David di Donatello: Foreign Film.
